This survey will have a huge impact on our children’s hockey in our community and as such we would really like as much participation from the membership as possible in this, so please encourage your friends and fellow parents with kids playing hockey in our association to respond to the survey which will take less than a minute to do. The two topics that this survey will be asking about are:
1. Interest in amalgamation with East Gwillimbury Minor Hockey to a completely new and larger Hockey Association which will be much more competitive at the AA and AE levels and a larger and better house league program.
2. Moving down from a AA to an A centre.
Either but not both of these are being considered and here is some background information:
Currently our AA and AE Rep teams are struggling to compete with the much larger centres around us and we are the smallest AA centre in the York Simcoe hockey loop and it will be 10-15 years or more before (and IF) Georgina even comes close to the size of our competing centres, like Newmarket, Barrie, Markham, etc., thus the consideration of moving down to A and AE. This option would help our Rep program but would NOT help our house league program which is also experiencing troubles because of the lack of players and teams and having to combine age groups in order to have the bare minimum of 4 teams that is required without having to consider joining the local league and then our house league having to travel to play other centers and thus driving up the cost of hockey for everyone.
This same topic was surveyed a couple of years ago on the website and it came back 50/50 so it was not enough to make it worthwhile to go through the process of putting everything together as we will have to put statistics together over the last 5 years on each of teams and make a proposal to OMHA. Even if the vote is positive, it by no means assures us that it will go through. OMHA would still have to approve and that is NOT an easy process so we are told, so please don't think that if the survey comes back positive it will happen.
Now the second and I think most favourable option for all is the idea of combining with EG. This new Association right now would still be one of the smallest AA centres in the YS loop but we would be about the same size as Stouffville and TNT and would hopefully make our combined Rep teams much more competitive and fun for our kids and our house league program would also be expanded and provide more teams at all levels in order to increase the competitive level and fun of that program as there would be more teams to play against and ensure we continue to be able to run a local house league program and not have to travel to Beeton, Innisfil, Schomberg, Nobleton, etc., to play house league hockey like those smaller centres do now. It will also help us to be able to hopefully keep both our AA and AE Regional Silver Stick sanctions which are a huge honour and also help to keep our hockey costs down to our members and by moving down to A we would likely face losing at least our AA sanction which is the much larger of the two tournaments for us.
There will be lots of questions about an amalgamation I’m sure, but if it were to go ahead then an Amalgamation Committee from both EG and Georgina would be created to discuss it. This would likely not be in effect for the 2014-2015 hockey season but the 2015-2016. OMHA has several models to help with amalgamation and in fact are encouraging centres to do it.
So please follow up with this very short survey and please encourage as many people you know in the hockey association to participate as these are VERY big and important decisions for our hockey community!
Here is the link to the survey which will be open until January 20th - https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CPKDLLC
Ken Jamieson,
GMHA President